At most large-scale developments, the commercial conversation begins with available leasing space and rent. With Diriyah Company, it opens with something else: One Diriyah. The $63+ bn development sitting on the edge of Riyadh is being shaped by curation rather than occupancy.
Its unique nature makes it the only development where there is opportunity to be special – as a brand and as a concept. Beneath that approach sits a delivery framework: the Be Ready Programme, designed to hold every incoming partner to an excellence standard before any partnership begins. Sharat Kumar leads the team responsible for space curation. In this conversation, he discusses the approach behind design enhancement, the standards brands and partners are held to, and what ‘ready’ means.
How is Diriyah approaching brand presence?
Sharat Kumar (SK): We needed to start with a vision for what Diriyah should feel like in a few years, and we worked backwards from there. Every brand, every operator, every concept, has had to gain its place in that story. The goal isn’t to fill space – it’s to create a specific experience, atmosphere, and identity. Diriyah Company offers this opportunity by being unique through its heritage. This allows brands to go beyond their standard presence and create concepts that stand out in experience; experience of space, product and service.
The service providers that are already collaborating with Diriyah are making a different kind of decision to those that will come later. How do you characterise the strategic significance of that first-mover position? How do the service providers benefit from the early association?
SK: With Diriyah Company, we are not just developing a culture and heritage-based city. We are building the capacities of the wider market. Through our engagement, our aim is to impart our expertise and experience to the ecosystem.
The early collaborators are not simply engaging with Diriyah Company: they are helping to set how fit-outs are delivered here – to a standard that has not previously been applied at this scale in the region. That discipline does not stay on site. Partners who have delivered in Diriyah carry forward proven capabilities that can be applied to landmark projects across the GCC and beyond.
Diriyah comprises of multiple districts across a 14km² masterplan encompassing retail, residential, hospitality, and commercial office. Does the curation philosophy and the Be Ready delivery standard apply differently across each? What does excellence look like in each sector within the context of a heritage city of national importance?
SK: Diriyah Company has an expansive, integrated, fully mixed-use masterplan and this is what inspired us to come up with the Be Ready programme. We wanted to make sure the process and expectations don’t change from district to district, project to project. Diriyah Company’s Centre of Excellence, of which Retail Design & Delivery is also a part, understood at a very early stage the need for a programme of this nature. A standardised programme allows for a shorter, one-time learning curve that can be deployed across any district and project – meaning that once you understand our expectations, you’re equipped to work anywhere within Diriyah.
The quality bar, the culture and heritage sensitivity, the attention to detail – none of that gets adjusted based on asset class. A contractor working on an office unit is held to the same fundamental standard as one working on a retail unit. The work looks different. The commitment behind it does not.
The Be Ready programme is Diriyah Company’s structured onboarding and readiness framework to equip contractors, designers, and fit-out partners to meet its delivery standards. What was the challenge it was designed to solve and how did you arrive at this particular response to it?
SK: The challenge we wanted to address was a gap between aspiration and delivery capability. Diriyah Company had a very clear picture of what Diriyah needed to look and feel like. What we found early on is that not every contractor or designer – however talented – had worked to our standards of excellence in this context, and within a stringent cultural heritage setting. Be Ready was our way of closing that gap systematically rather than project by project. We bring partners into our world before they start work, not after.
Participation through the programme not only acts as a pathway to excellence but also helps to contribute to the development of local content in the Kingdom.
The curation philosophy and the Be Ready programme serve different purposes – one is about strategic alignment with the destination; the other is about delivery capability. How do the two work together in practice? What happens when a partner is strong on one dimension but still developing on the other?
SK: In terms of strategic alignment, Diriyah is a PIF giga-project under the Vision 2030 umbrella, and Diriyah Company aims to develop a fully mixed-use city built around culture and heritage, with 300-year-old At-Turaif, the birthplace of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, at its heart. While Diriyah is rooted in history, Diriyah Company is also looking to the future through systems, standards, and capability building. We are raising the benchmark in design, construction, and fit-out across every sphere of development.
In terms of delivery – the Be Ready programme is our mechanism for ensuring that ambition is matched by execution. It sets out clearly what we expect – the quality, the processes, the standards.
What has been the response from the market since the programme launched? How many companies have engaged so far and how many more does Diriyah Company intend to bring through the Be Ready programme?
SK: The response has been strong, which tells us the gap we identified was real. The market was ready for structured engagement of this kind. Contractors and designers want to know what is expected of them before they reach site, not after. Diriyah Company has been attracting a significant pipeline of partners across all disciplines. We intend to scale as the project advances through its phases.
What outlasts the build is people. Leaders who can take this forward, long after the masterplan is complete.
Do companies need an established local presence or Saudi partner before they can engage with Diriyah Company? What support is available for those taking their first steps into the Kingdom?
SK: It depends on where you are. If you already have a registered entity in the Kingdom, the path is straightforward – register and participate in the Be Ready programme and we’ll take it from there. If you don’t have a local presence yet, we suggest a parallel approach: register and participate in the Be Ready programme, and at the same time start exploring how to establish an on-ground presence in the Kingdom. The Saudi Arabian government has many programmes and initiatives that facilitate participation in the country’s growth story. The Ministry of Investment, MISA, is a good place to start.
The Be Ready programme is explored in greater depth at an upcoming webinar on
24 June 2026. Register here.
